How I Made A Website About Fitness...

...and why you need a website too

This page is a continuation of my About Me page. It's really been great hearing from so many people.

I get a lot of e-mails about my personal story and how it has touched so many people.

Thank you to everyone for the well wishes and all of the amazing cancer survivors that have written and shared their stories with me as well. Thank you for taking the time to read my story and then taking the time to write in. Glad that I was able to touch your life in some way.

Like most successful SBI retirees, I get a lot of questions asking about building websites and about SBI. Most of the questions are the same. So instead of writing a bunch of e-mails back to everyone (but please don't stop e-mailing me to say hello), I figured I would just write a quick FAQ about SBI and some of the common questions asked about building a website.

So How Much Do You Make?

This is the most common question stemming from your desire to know, "So how much do you actually make with your websites?" I remember when I first started, people would ask me this question and I would say excitedly, "I made $50 last month!"

People looked at me funny and thought that I should probably give up on my career as a website creator. Well, now I'm the one retired, so who's making funny faces now?

But this didn't happen overnight, so here's the run down:

It is June 2010 and I have been with SBI since June 2008. So exactly 2 years for me so far. I own 3 SBI websites: Extreme Fitness Now, my first site, and Today's Women and Health.

Extreme Fitness Now and Today's Women and Health are established websites. They have been around for a while and I get anywhere from 1200-1600 visitors a day and over 30,0000 visitors a month from the both of these sites alone.

My income from Adsense is about $500 (USD) a month. (Adsense earnings for June 2010 below)

Update February 2011

I am currently making $800/month from adsense. (Adsense earnings from February 2011 below).

I make money from other advertisers like Infolinks and Chitika on top of Google Adsense. I also have income from several other sources and advertisers including products I sell through Clickbank, Amazon.com, Linkshare, and Commission Junction. I do stock products in my home. I just tell people where to go and if they buy something, I make some money from the refferal. Some of the books I sell on my fitness site earn me $25 per sale. It is easy for me to earn a few extra hundred dollars a month. This is especially true for January when I earn double my average income. Got to love New Year's Resolutions!

Granted, it's not a full-time income yet, but it pays my rent and my basic utilities. Also, Adsense grows every year with site growth. I would rather work 10-15 hours a week teaching music, which I love, than 40-50 hours at a job I am not all the thrilled about.

If I had the time to spend working on my sites all day, I could easily be making a lot more money than I am now. This is the income I made working on my sites only 1-4 hours a week (I now spend around 6-10 hours a week). The more time you have available to work on your websites, the quicker they grow and the quicker you earn money.

The take home message here is that I make money whether or not I work on my websites. Sometimes I'm on vacation, sometimes I practicing my guitar, sometimes I'm watching TV, but I'm always making money, even in my sleep! That's the coolest part.

What's also hard to beat is the feeling that you own your life and your time. I never want to go back working a slave job ever again. No amount of money is worth sitting in an office for 8 hours out of my day. That does not include my 45 min commute.

Is This Really as Easy as It sounds?

This question usually follows the money question. Hey, we all have our priorities, right? Depends on what you call easy.

Is it writing a few pages, clicking a few buttons, and then presto, your packing your bags for a nice trip to the Greek Isles spending your time however you plaese. If that's your version of easy, then the answer is no.

Building a website takes a lot of time and effort. It's not something that happens instantly and is not a way to "get rich quick". A lot of time and effort went into building my websites. Do not underestimate the amount of time, energy, and hard work it takes to get a website off the ground.

But that's all it takes. You do not have to be Plato, Shakespeare, or Bill Gates to be good at building a website and writing content.

You will initially have to learn a lot, but that's half the fun. No matter what your background is, SBI guides you through the whole process. There is also a great SBI community that can help answer your questions along the way. f.

For me, half the value of SBI is rolled up in it's online community. They are all website builders trying to build their own businesses and they are so open and willing to share their success stories and tips with you. Everyone wants you to succeed.

But it really is easy for anyone to start.

How much time do you spend working on your site?

I'll focus on my first site Extreme Fitness Now.

When I started, I still had my day job, so I could only work on the weekends and sometimes during the evenings. I usually wrote a page or two per week. Some times I did not have time to write at all. But I averaged about 1-4 hours a week.

Now that my day job is over, I dedicate about 1-2 hours a day (Mon-Fri) working on my sites. And that's only if I want to. If I'm not home or away on vacation, the sites keep growing whether or not I work on them. Remember, I started my SBI journey and work on my sites because I wanted to, not because I have to.

Now that I have to time to work on my sites more consistently, they are growing even faster and making even more money. I have more lovely visitors like you stopping in and reading the information I provide on my pages.

Sounds good but I have no idea what I could make a website about.

Neither did I.

Some people have an idea and some people don't. I think I had 4 or 5 ideas before settling on my Extreme Fitness Site.

The first thing that SBI teaches you is how to select a profitable topic. There are no general rules. Your hobbies and passions are going to be different from your neighbors. So it's really based on you. SBI has brainstorming tools to help you generate ideas and make sure that they will be profitable enough for you to pursue. You will see if there is enough interest in a topic, how much competition there is, and if there is money to be made.

Choosing a topic for your website is the most important step in the whole process and really is a tough process without the help of SBI. I honestly do not know what I would have done without all their cool programs and guides to help me out along the way.

It says it costs $299 for the first year. What are the costs after that? Are there any financial catches?

$299 is the yearly subscription fee. It works out to $25 a month. After the first year, you can elect to pay $29.99 a month, but why waste the extra $5 a month. If you work hard, you will likely recoupe your original investment in the first year.

There are no catches whatsoever. SBI includes everything you need. Some web providers charge you extra for stats and analysis and search engine submission. This is all included in the price of SBI. You can't go wrong by trying it out. The way I see it you have everything to win and nothing to lose. If you are not happy, you can return it and get your money back.

What if I Can't Write?

I got a C in college for writing. Seriously, I'm a horrible writer and a horrible speller. My high school history teacher said I would do well in life as long as I had a word processor with spell check.

SBI teaches you everything you need to know to build a successful website, including how to write compelling content that helps you make money.

Ken Evoy wrote a great book called Make Your Content Pre-Sell. It teaches how to write for the web. The book has always been part of SBI and available for free.

If someone tells me they worry about their writing I send them this link: you can download your free copy here.

That's it in a nutshell. I've covered the most important topics. If you still have questions, feel free to write me.

I wish you the best of luck, and I'll leave you with this messasge from, Ken Evoy, the founder of SiteSell and the creator of SBI.

If you have broadband just click on the little picture and he will personally show you around SBI via the SBI TV. (Slow connection? Go here for the print version instead.)